


Come Shed Your Light

by acaelousqueadcentrum



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Tumblr, prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-04-03 02:37:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4083463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaelousqueadcentrum/pseuds/acaelousqueadcentrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompts and short Root/Shaw fics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Goodbye My Lover, Goodbye My Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When your god betrays you.

 

_Did I disappoint you or let you down?_ **  
**

* * *

The Machine tells Root to stop.

Begs her even.

Root should feel powerful.

A god–her God–kneels before her in supplication.

She should feel omnipotent, infinite.

But she’s more lost than she’s ever been, and for the first time since she was chosen, God’s voice in the wind, Root doubts. She was to be the holy burning bush, she was to bear the message of hope to the people, spread the word of deliverance.

But she feels alone.

And the louder her God whispers in her ear, the louder She pleads and begs and commands, the further out Root feels. Cast out to sea, and with the hand that tended her lighthouse ripped away from her, stolen away from her.  The safety of the shore mocks her, memories of land and love haunt her.

The Machine won’t stop talking to her, won’t stop filling her head with everything but the secret she wants–she needs–to know.

For the first time since she accepted her Savior, since she took up the acolyte’s robes, Root wishes for silence. Wishes She would let her be, let her swim off into the dark seas.

The Machine warns her. Tells her of the dangers ahead, the dangers that lurk in the shadows, the waves that wait to pull her under if she doesn’t change course.

_Good,_  Root answers her God as she feels the cool familiar metal in her palms and thinks of love and death,  _let them try._

* * *

_I’m so hollow, baby, I’m so hollow  
I’m so, I’m so, I’m so hollow._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Goodbye My Lover" by James Blunt.


	2. A Kind of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love comes in all forms.

You don’t love.

You never have, not in the way other people do. Desperation and promises, tears and flowers and soft touches. Hopes and dreams.

You’ve never wanted any of that, you’ve never understood any of that.

But maybe this.

That you can’t imagine anything you’d rather be doing, anything that’s not sitting here, with her sleeping on your shoulder while the TV cycles through one mindless show after another, is enough.

Maybe this, that if you had a choice between being here with her, or alone with yourself, you’d pick her, is a kind of love too.

Maybe it’s all you need to understand.

Maybe it’s enough.


	3. The Girls Call Murder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They don't expect it to be fun.

They don’t expect it to be fun.

They expect it to be hard.

They expect it to be dangerous.

They expect it to be deadly, and not just for the agents they take down together.

But never fun.

Except … it is.

It’s a whole fucking lot of fun.

~

Maybe it starts in the hotel room with the desk chair and the iron.

Or maybe it starts with ten hours to kill in a CIA safehouse.

Could even any of the missions they run after that, ducking in and out of each other’s lives like lines on a map. Always crossing, rarely converging.

But the pattern’s always the same.

Root flirts like it’s her mother language, sultry and slinky, and her body moves like warm honey, so smooth and sweet that Shaw’s mouth waters at the thought of the taller woman’s skin against her tongue.

But it’s a game, and Shaw’s one of the best players there is. So she schools her face and steadies her breath, shoots cool rebuttals back and watches them bounce off Root’s impenetrable armor.

They confuse the boys around them, but they know the game they’re playing. They know how to read beneath the lines, anticipate the moves ahead. It’s a delicate balance they keep, a fine line they walk, a see-saw between too hard and too soft, and it keeps them both primed, on-edge, ready for whatever they’ll be thrown at next.

~

It’s a game and it’s a stalemate and neither of them cares that if they win or lose they’ll do it together.

They rampage through streets and neighborhoods and cities, all in the name of peace and prosperity. Seeds they know they’ll never reap.

And what they do some might call destruction. Some might call murder.

Root, though Shaw rolls her eyes and feels for the butt of her gun, calls it love.

Because what else is it when a woman will follow you to the ends of the earth, to certain death, just to make sure you don’t have to face the inevitable on your own?

~

Maybe they’re just pieces, maybe all of them are just pawns.

Maybe there’s a plan, a pattern on the board they’re too close to see.

But in the spaces in-between, in the moments when all they have is each other, fuck, they’re having fun falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Girls Girls Girls" by Liz Phair.


	4. Wiser with the Things I've Done

“Why did you do that,” Shaw shouts angrily above her, hands tearing at the soft leather of Root’s favorite jacket. 

But Root has no answer. She’s not even sure what the question is, to be honest. 

There’s a pressure, heavy and hot, on her chest, and she sees Sameen’s hands glisten in the low gleam from the security lights of the parking structure. The same glow that lights Shaw up from above, turns her into some kind of angry angel. Red and wet and beautiful, Root thinks, and her mind calls up a memory, or maybe a dream. The shorter woman in the kind of dress that could stop a heart, curves and muscles and that wry, dangerous grin. 

“You stupid, stupid–,” Sameen continues, but the words are strained and rough, and for a moment, Root wonders when it started raining. 

 _But–but,_ a thought struggles and staggers up from the back of her mind, and then it’s lost, swept away in a bright, thundering flash of pain as Sameen presses hard and harder into her chest, turning her head to shout. 

“John,” she shouts, “Root’s down, get your ass up here now!”

And the look on her face is desperate. 

And there are tears in her eyes, and Root wants to lift her hand, to wipe them away. 

But everything is heavy, so heavy. And she feels like she’s floating, disconnected from her body, a fog rolling in fast and thick. 

Sameen’s face fades slowly from focus, as the lights above flicker and blink. 

She’s tired–so tired–but Sameen shouts at her, shakes her, threatens her with everything she can think of.

“Why–” Shaw asks again, her voice sounding hollow. But Root’s eyelids slip closed, and the last thought she has before everything falls away is just a single word. 

_Because._

~ * ~ 

There’s a cloying sweetness clouding her thoughts, but Root fights against it. Tears through the thick clouds until her mind is clear. 

It’s like taking a sip of fresh, cool water after a long walk in the hot desert. And slowly she pulls herself up and out into the bright afternoon sun. 

Pain floods in with sharp jabs, but she can curl her toes and move her fingers and even though her chest feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, it rises and falls with every breath. 

She’s alive. 

Root lets the relief flood through her veins, flipping back through the directory in her mind, the last moments in her memory. 

 _Because_. 

“Why?”

 _Because_ , she remembers, _because_. 

It’s a better reason than most. 


	5. Got a Hungry Heart

“Sorry, sweetie,” Root continued, breaking the side mirror off and using the reflection to check the location of their attackers, “I know how much you were looking forward to that steak.”

Shaw glared at her, and Root was reminded of some of their earliest encounters–blood and hate and and the most pleasurable kind of pain.

She turned and picked off an agent attempting to flank them before throwing another dark look Root’s way.

“You know my rule, honey pie,” she spit out in frustrated disgust, “if I don’t eat, nobody eats.”

Root just smiled pleasantly and tracked the movement of one of the snipers pinning them down.

And the last thing Shaw heard before the taller woman scooted out from behind the vehicle, going on the offensive, was a laughing promise:

“Oh,” Root said, “I think we can find something to sate your appetites.”


	6. The Aftershock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 6742--you're not going to let this one end.

She’s died six thousand, seven hundred and forty-one times before she comes back to you.

And it doesn’t matter that they were all in her head. The scars are there all the same. The way she looks at you like she’s not quite sure yet that you’re real. That you’re not just another figment, another phantom.

Her eyes are rimmed with red, and her lips swollen from where she’s bitten them. Wrists ringed with bruises left behind with the restraints that had become necessary to keep her safe. To keep her from harming herself in her fevered attempts to keep from harming you.

If you brush a hand against her face, she shudders, in something almost like fear, and tears form in the corners of her eyes. Being loved by you is torture.

But if you grip her harshly, if you grab her forcefully, force her to look into your eyes, to watch your lips move as you whisper that it’s you, it’s you, she’s safe now, it’s you.

Then she laughs, and her eyes light up with desire. A game she knows how to play, a game she excels at.

Every night, you sit by her bedside, on the cold floor of the subway station, knees hugged close to your chest, and you remind her.

She is mighty and she is good.

She strong and she is kind.

She is real and she is loved.

One of these mornings, she’ll start to believe it again.

And you’ll be here, waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Don't Wait" by Mapei


End file.
